"the hardest thing in this world is to live in it"
It’s about time I added a category for my field of study, eh?
Occasionally, world’s collide in interesting ways, and things I’ve never thought of together before come slamming into one confusing medley. For instance – why in the world would anyone name themselves after a Monty Python sketch?
South Carolina appears poised on the brink of approving legislation that will require women to view ultrasound images prior to abortion. While all three (yes, that’s right, all three) abortion clinics in South Carolina perform ultrasounds to determine the age of the fetus, the law would require women to view the images, with the probable exemption of rape and incest victims.
Why? According to the bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Greg Delleney,
She can determine for herself whether she is carrying an unborn child deserving of protection or whether its just an inconvenient, unnecessary part of her body and an abortion fits her circumstances at that time.
South Carolina law already requires the ultrasound, as well as doctor counseling of the age and development of the fetus, as well as alternatives to abortion. This is nothing more than a bald-faced attempt at intimidation and emotional manipulation of someone who is already in a vulnerable position.
The thing that baffles me the most is, what? You’re going to suddenly see an ultrasound image and decide that no, all the reasons you have for an abortion have flown out the window, and really it’s a great time to be a mother, hooray? Are we suddenly going to see social services increase in funding? Are we going to have outstanding health care, job retraining, free and good state-sponsored child-sitting services? Is South Carolina going to suddenly take away every single obstacle that exists to bearing and caring for a child, so that the only barrier remaining is whether or not a woman thinks this is the right time for her, without consideration to financial/economic concerns?
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
-Kelly Hills
Originally posted on the American Journal of Bioethics Editors Blog.
This week, Time’s senior religion writer David Van Biema looks at whether or not there is a case to be made for secular education of the Bible and whether or not there is a place for Biblical literacy, especially in our high schools.
Van Biema interviewed Boston University’s Stephen Prothero, who gives one of the more convincing reasons why it actually would be a good idea to have this secular edudcation:
In the late ’70s, [students] knew nothing about religion, and it didn’t matter. But then religion rushed into the public square. What purpose could it possibly serve for citizens to be ignorant of all that?
The ignorance — ignorance that Van Biema notes is as problematic with self-described evangelicals as it is with anyone else — leads us to a place where people are unable to critically examine public policy platforms for their hidden religious agenda. This has been on my mind lately, given that a lobbyist for a large and influential religious group freely admitted to me and the students we were talking to that part of her job is to remove the religion from the policy she lobbies for — that is, she (and many people with the same job across this country) is specifically trying to advance her religious group’s beliefs via secular language.
It’s a hidden agenda, one that favours secrecy to get what one wants, couched in language that tries to mask religious belief for social concern and looking out for the best interest in society. And we need to give people the critical skills to examine platforms for these hidden agendas — and without a familiarity in the religious texts that are driving the agenda, the goal seems lost.
-Kelly Hills
Originally posted at the American Journal of Bioethics Editors Blog.
The use of quarantine explicitly relies upon Mill’s harm principle: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will, is to prevent harm to others” (Mill). As Matthew Wynia notes in the February issue of the American Journal of Bioethics, there are many serial-distancing models that are also effective in disease control, but quarantine is an excellent boundary example that allows us to push the limits of restrictions of liberty in the interests of public perception. In quarantine, we restict the movement of or separate out from society those who might be infectious — those who have been or might have been exposed to infection. (Those who have been exposed and are showing symptoms of illness/diagnosed as sick and are removed/restricted are properly considered to be isolation, a typically unopposed move.)
Assuming
Of course, the issue here is may, might and what constitutes risk. If I may have been exposed to chicken pox, should I be subject to the same reaction as if I had been exposed to ebola? Where, on the scale of disease and contagion, do we draw the line of acceptable risk versus need for public protection?
On top of this, we have to wonder how effective such infringements would be, anyhow. In the recent SARS epidemic, quarantine failed more than it succeeded — people either fled or simply ignored the orders. But given that contagion spreads exponentially, this might be a red herring. Even if half of those infected adhere to the quarantine, the prevention of spread of disease might be considered successful.
Ultimately, most of the people in quarantine will not get sick, and depending on the type of quarantine might actually be further exposed to illness in the very effort to prevent the spread of it. The question then becomes, not is a conflict between public health and civil liberties inevitable, but, as Wynia asks, how one should decide at what point we have to infringe on liberty to prevent the mere risk of harm to others (Wynia 2007).
Given general public attitudes toward quarantine in times of health crises, the most successful option is likely to resist the urge to panic on the part of public officials, and use the least restrictive means appropriate to protect the public. This means that
any limitations on civil liberties should be proportional and no more restrictive than is really necessary. In other words, don’t use involuntary quarantine or surveillance devices such as bracelets if voluntary measures will work; don’t restrict someone to one room if an entire house is available
and etc (Wynia 2007). Given public history with quarantines, it is not unlikely to anticipate that the public will support the idea of balancing the preservation of freedom with protecting and preventing the risk of harm to others.
How many philosophers does it take to change a lightbulb? Here’s Steven Brust’s answers,
Pragmatist: Hey, if holding the bulb while four of your friends turn the chair works for you, then that is the best way to change a lightbulb for you.
Empiricist: We can’t know how to change a lightbulb, but we can make lists of how big it is, the wattage, the thickness of the glass, the composition of the filiment…
Thomist: When we examine the concept of “lightbulb” one requirement is that it light up. Hence, if it does not light up, it is not a lightbulb. If it is not a lightbulb, there is no reason to change it.
Aristotelean: Changing of lightbulbs can be divided into: manipulation of the old bulb, and manipulation of the new bulb. Bulb manipulation, in turn, can be divided into: Turning motion, raising motion, dropping motion. We cannot understand motion.
Kantian: By understanding the lightbulb-in-itself, it becomes, for us, a new lightbulb.
Platonist: The closer our lightbulb gets to the Ideal Lightbulb, the less it requires changing.
Dialectical Materialist: None. The lightbulb changes because of it’s own internal contradictions.
Skeptic: We can’t know if we’re changing the lightbulb. We can’t know if changing the lightbulb is an improvement. In fact, we can’t really know if it’s dark. Especially with the lights out.
Hegelian: When the lightbulb becomes irrational, it ceases to exist. Insofar as a new lightbulb sheds light on the Absolute Idea, it becomes a rational lightbulb, and comes into being as part of our striving for the rational.
Post-structuralist: By rejecting neo-Enlightment notions that privilege “light,” we can conceptualize the relationship between optically-oriented envisioning and those signifiers that address interpretations of post-colonial modernism as an established text within the framework of which, intertextually, we are lead to reject any causal relationship between the operands and the motivators.
Memetics: The speed at which the notion (“a burned out lightbulb should be replaced”) has spread is inexplicable unless one looks at the idea itself.
Existentialist: Why change the lightbulb?
I decided that the list needed help, and added two of my own.
Clinical ethicist: It is a violation of the lightbulb’s autonomy to change it without its explicit informed consent. In the absence of the lightbulb’s advanced directive, we must act in the manner we think the lightbulb most likely to act in if it had full ability to consent to care.
Bioethicist: The changing of the lightbulb comes at the intersection of multiple fields of study, and we must research what ethical, legal and social issues are encountered and how they are handled by society before we act.